His face was as expressionless as a Chinaman's. He thought he had never
looked on a cruder exhibition of sex-provocation. He thought his ears
deceived him when he heard Mrs. Horton exclaim:

"Did you ever see such a pair of children! Linda! Morry! You'll break
something... _Do_ behave! Can't you make Morry behave, Sophy?... Oh,
dear! What do you _mean_ by behaving like this, Linda?"

Amaldi thought this question most unnecessary. He thought Belinda's
meaning only too painfully lucid. He was astounded to hear Sophy's
sweet, natural laughter.

"Morris!" she called. "Belinda! You really shouldn't romp like this
before Amaldi. He'll think you're demented...."

("'Demented!'" thought Amaldi.)

For the first time it dawned on him that perhaps Sophy did not take in
the situation after all. Then he glanced at Belinda, panting, flushed,
bacchante-like, in the grip of the white-faced, angry-eyed man who was
trying to drag the ring from her finger. No! It was impossible. The
others _must_ see a thing so flagrant, so palpable. But Mrs. Horton
continued to exclaim helplessly at intervals:

"Oh, what _children_! What _babies_!"

While Sophy merely sat resigned, waiting for the hurricane to subside.

Loring conquered, of course. He strode up to Amaldi and dropped the ring
into his hand, while Belinda sank down on a distant sofa, gasping out:

"You're a _brute_, Morry!... I _hate_ you!"

Loring gave a short laugh, and strolled out of the room.

Amaldi also took his leave in a frame of mind that may be described as
bewildered.

XXX

But this occasion, which had led Amaldi to suspect that Sophy did not
realise the state of things between her husband and Belinda, was the
cause of her first awakening to something unusual in their relationship.
It was not their boisterous romping which had done this. Sophy was too
used to the fondness of Young America for indulging in this sort of
"high-jinks" to notice particularly the rough-and-tumble of Belinda's
passage with Loring.

She had been troubled by the disgust which she felt underneath Amaldi's
quiet manner. She winced from what she divined to be his point of
view--the point of view of a cultured Athenian watching the holiday
pranks of barbarians. This mortified and disturbed her. But she had only
regretted the bad taste of the scuffle; it had not revealed to her
anything deeper. No--it was Loring's curt laugh as he turned away from
Belinda's cry of "I _hate_ you!"--it